London has been battered by 50mph winds that have felled trees and caused travel chaos. Powerful gusts swept across the capital as the Met Office issued a yellow "be aware" weather alert for most of the country.

The Archbishop of Canterbury has launched an attack on the growing inequality and fear gripping a “paranoid Britain”.

Dr Rowan Williams, who steps down as head of the Anglican church in December, said the yawning gap between rich and poor had brought “hopelessness” for those at the bottom and “anxiety” for those higher up the ladder. He said the lack of social cohesion in 21st-century Britain had been heightened by a sense of “corporate paranoia” after terrorist attacks and many people had “put up the shutters”.

In an interview with BBC’s Newsnight programme being broadcast tonight, the country’s most senior religious leader criticised a culture where people are becoming “fist-clenching, anxious, not generous”.

He said: “The gulf between the top and the bottom of the economic ladder has grown and is growing, that’s not something we really tackled.”

He said Britain should take inspiration from the works of Charles Dickens.

The central message of Dickens, he said, was that people must let go of the anxiety that comes from the acquisition of wealth.

Dr Williams said: “You have to grow through generosity — that is, I think, the Dickens lesson that I would want to see etched in granite across the life of this country.”

Another lesson we could learn from Dickens was that the education system should teach people to use their imagination and emotions, rather than turning education into a “sausage machine” or “letting the box-ticking mentality take over”. He added: “Without imagination you won’t get people to understand that they’re part of something bigger than themselves.”

Dr Williams will become Master of Magdalene College at Cambridge University next year. The Crown Nominations Commission is considering who will succeed him as archbishop.